Working closely with farmers, research institutions, and civil-society organisations, WASSAN is preserving natural resources across four Indian states.
In 1999, Watershed Support Services and Activities Network—popularly known as WASSAN—started out as a network and resource support agency working at the interface of government, civil society organisations, and community institutions designing and implementing watershed management programmes across India. Formed as a response to new watershed guidelines introduced by the Government of India at the time, WASSAN’s role was to provide an interface between government programmes, Panchayat Raj institutions, civil-society organisations, and local communities.
Today, WASSAN works closely with various stakeholders to manage natural resources in rainfed ecologies across Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Jharkhand, and Odisha. Their work spans conserving seed systems, promoting natural farming, managing water resources, and reviving millets and forgotten foods.
Key Areas of Work
Why We Love WASSAN
• Collaboration at the grassroots level: For WASSAN, it is important to be on the field, learn from local communities, and distill their learnings in order to figure out solutions for managing natural resources, improving nutrition, and building sustainable livelihoods. They work across states and districts—which they deem ‘learning sites’—to pilot small-scale initiatives. They maintain a strong on-ground presence, closely working with smallholder farmers and tribal communities, especially women.
• Building a network of civil-society organisations for policy development: WASSAN has had long standing partnerships with civil-society organisations. They have built and supported networks that identify gaps within the ecosystem, and find solutions through projects, policy development, and on-ground interventions. At WASSAN, networking is critical for imagining and bringing impact at scale. Networks that WASSAN has been a part of over the years include Revitalising Rainfed Agriculture Network (RRAN) and National Coalition for Natural Farming (NCNF).
• Holistic approach towards watershed management: While watershed management helps in addressing the availability of water, it has to be complemented with holistic and participatory water management by the communities on ground. WASSAN’s work has entailed a shift from productivity-centric agricultural practices to holistic approaches that prioritise ecological balance, and address the interconnectedness of watershed management issues. These include climate-resilient practices like multi-cropping, influencing crop choices with an emphasis on food and fodder crops such as millets, and integrating sustainable livestock and fisheries management into farming practices.
How They Work
WASSAN’s work in numbers
Number of States (on-ground engagement): 4
Active Projects: 18
Research Collaborations: 3, including TIGR2ESS, University of Cambridge; The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia; and The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Natural resource management in rainfed ecosystems
Around 70 percent of agriculture in India is rainfed, yet historically, public investments in agriculture have largely been skewed towards irrigated areas. Moreover, rainfed regions are highly vulnerable to the climate crisis, making them ecologically fragile and threatened by land degradation, groundwater depletion as well as erosion of biodiversity. Despite serious policy neglect over decades, these areas meet majority of the oilseeds and cereal needs in the country.
WASSAN works with communities—especially smallholder farmers, farm workers, women, and tribal groups—in these regions to improve ecological security and production systems based on water availability and soil health.
WASSAN supports government departments and agencies at state and national levels in designing programmes focused on natural resource management, climate-resilient agriculture, and natural farming. For instance, in Odisha, which has the third-largest rainfed area in India, WASSAN initiated the Odisha Rainfed Agriculture Mission (ORAM) to secure crops from dry spells via participatory rainwater management. This promotes crop diversification and helps farmers increase their household incomes.
Integrated farming systems
WASSAN encourages and supports farmers—with help from other stakeholders—to combine crops, livestock, and poultry on a single farm, thus creating an integrated and productive agricultural ecosystem. They take site-specific and landscape-based approaches to promote natural farming methods, improve soil health, and implement water harvesting techniques to enhance livelihoods for marginalised farmers. Take their Special Programme for Promotion of Integrated Farming (SPPIF), for instance, through which they support the Department of Agriculture & Farmers’ Empowerment in Odisha to promote integrated farming in tribal regions across the state. Similarly, in the Alluri Sitarama Raju district in Andhra Pradesh, WASSAN works with farmers to increase millet yields, and in the Satya Sai and Vikarabad Districts to diversify the cropping system.
Conserving seed systems and reviving millets
WASSAN promotes millets, often considered a climate-resilient crop, an alternative to monocrops like rice and wheat. With the Odisha Millets Mission (OMM), their flagship programme established in 2017, they function as the Programme Secretariat, operating closely with the Department of Agriculture & Farmers’ Empowerment, Government of Odisha. This involves working with the government and farmers to revive millets like ragi (finger millet), little millet, foxtail, and kodo in rainfed farming systems. It also entails advocating for their inclusion in state nutrition programmes such as Integrated Child Development Scheme, Mid-Day Meal, Integrated Tribal Development Agency supported Welfare Hostels, as well as in the Public Distribution System.
OMM in Numbers
- Districts covered: 30
- Number of NGOs: 110
- Number of Farmer Producer Organisations: 130
- Number of Women SHGs: 4,000
- Number of Farmers: 2.4 lakh
- Hectare Demonstration Area Achievement: 1.43 lakh
(Figures as of 2023-24)
Through the OMM programme, WASSAN helped identify 44 traditional millet varieties from Koraput and Malkangiri districts, expanding millet seed production across farmers’ fields, and multiplied traditional millet varieties by diversifying crops.
“Millet seed availability is very limited, so our seed village programme is crucial. We expanded production from 60 to 170 hectares,” says Pulak Ranjan Nayak, Senior Programme Officer at OMM. “For the first time, custodian farmers—who have conserved seeds for generations—were included as official members in seed production.”
In 2020, WASSAN kickstarted a project under OMM to promote nutrition security and millet-based livelihoods through women’s self-help groups. Currently, they partner with more than 3,500 enterprises led by self-help groups, who source raw materials from farmer producer organisations within the network. They offer women post-harvest machinery support, train them to make value-added millet products and develop millet-based recipes, and supply food to Odisha’s nutrition programmes.
How You Can Help
WASSAN is always looking for collaborators to support their mission of building sustainable food systems. They also seek partners in communication, social media, capacity building, and technology to strengthen agroecological transformation and improve the lives and livelihoods of rainfed smallholder farmers.
If you’re interested in working with WASSAN, write to them at mail@wassan.org.
This story is part of our Organisation Partnership Program. At The Locavore, we strive to keep the practices of an organisation transparent and honest across all forms of partnerships.
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